


are you there, god?

by midnightRequiem



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Dark, F/F, M/M, Slow Build, also the serial killer has big zodiac energy, and her and robin get to bang at some point, but there will be lesbian pining first of course, tbh just wanted to write a fic where nancy gets a gun
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:54:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22179625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightRequiem/pseuds/midnightRequiem
Summary: The winter of '89 is winding down and the new decade is welcomed in by a serial killer stalking the streets of New York. But Nancy Wheeler has killed monsters before—how bad can one man be?Starring Nancy, investigative journalist extraordinaire, Robin, who's trying to write music and mind her business, and Steve and Jonathan, neither of whom know what the hell is going on. Welcome to murder town, next stop trauma.
Relationships: Jonathan Byers/Steve Harrington, Robin Buckley & Steve Harrington, Robin Buckley/Nancy Wheeler, Steve Harrington & Nancy Wheeler
Comments: 14
Kudos: 98





	1. happy holidays

It's a normal Sunday night for Nancy Wheeler: coffee mug in hand, hunched over a typewriter, police scanner crackling in the background. The window's open and the December air is cutting through, too cold for comfort, but she leaves it that way because the chill is keeping her awake.

She's been staring at the title she's just typed for several minutes now, dissatisfied. "Butcher Stalks the Streets of New York; NYPD has no Suspects in Custody." She hates it. It's not very snappy, and she knows damn well that the only way to get people to pick up the paper and read her article is with a snappy title. And more so than any other article she's ever written, she really, _really_ needs people to read this one. 

On the table next to her, her notebook has the whole timeline written out in neat black ink: four bodies so far, all women, ages sixteen to twenty-eight. All went missing while walking home from work or school at night. All turned up in pieces, seemingly at random locations. 

Nancy can't believe that no one is talking about this—there could be a real serial killer out there—and for that, she's trying her damndest for this article to get the word out. The police are being infuriatingly quiet about it and she wants to do something about that. But that starts with a title. And this one's complete shit. 

After a while she gives up and turns the volume up on the police radio, pacing around as several voices cut in and out over each other. The last two bodies turned up on weekends—maybe he's got a nine to five?—and she has a sick feeling that he's on the hunt again. 

Like clockwork, there's a sudden silence on the radio, and then a gruff male voice: 

_"Yeah, we've got a body. Central Park. By 94th Street."_

There it is. Nancy rushes back to the table and cranks the volume some more; her neighbor's going to give her shit again tomorrow morning. _"Bring bags... she's in pieces."_

Breathless, she shuts the radio off and goes to the phone by her bedside, dialing the number she knows by heart now: Joe, her contact at the Central Park Precinct. Two awkward dates with him was a fine price to pay for information. The line rings a few times; she's about to give up, figuring he's not on duty, but after a minute he picks up. 

"Central Park Precinct, this is Officer Salermo." 

"Hi, Joe, it's Nancy Wheeler." 

"Nancy Wheeler," he drawls, a flirtatious tone already creeping into his voice. "What's got you up so late?" 

"I need some information," she says, as measuredly as possible. She's not in the mood for the back-and-forth tonight. "Do you know anything about the body that was just found in Central Park?"

He pauses to think. "What do you mean? Like you said, they just found it."

"I mean, in connection to other bodies," she says, exasperated. "Come on, Joe, this is the fifth time this month that a girl's dismembered body was found around the city." 

"Yeah, I heard a little something about that," he hedges. "But listen, Nance, this is the first one to turn up in our precinct. We don't have anything on the others. Weren't the first two in Brooklyn, anyway?"

"Well, yes, but—"

"There's your problem." Joe sighs. "That's a whole other borough. It's out of our depth. If more of them show up around here, that's a different story." 

Nancy realizes that she's squeezing the phone cord tight enough to straighten it. "But don't you think these are connected?" 

"Do I think they're connected? Yeah, maybe. But until we know for sure and get orders to look into it, our hands are tied. Who knows, there might be detectives at another precinct already working on it."

"You know he's just going to keep doing it." 

He sighs again. "And we'll catch him. We've got our best guys on this case, and if it comes out that all of these are linked, we'll have the best guys from everywhere. Tell you what, when the report comes back from the body in the Park, I'll give you a call, all right? Be safe out there."

She goes back to the typewriter, takes the paper from the carriage, and throws it in the garbage. She's got a new title in mind, and by midnight, the finished article rests squarely in the middle of the table, the ink gleaming ominously in the dark.

| | |

The next morning, it takes Nancy an embarrassingly long time to realize what day it is. The Salvation Army Santa on the way to the train with the painfully loud bell is what finally reminds her—it's Christmas Eve. People are with their families today, and she's rushing to the office to get her writeup on the editor's desk.

As one-minded as she is when she has a goal, Nancy grudgingly stops at a payphone by the steps to the station and pops a quarter in. Her mother picks up on the first ring.

"Hello?"

"Mom, it's Nancy." 

"Nancy! Oh, honey, Merry Christmas!" Of course her mother sounds over the moon, and with a guilty pang in her chest, Nancy can't remember the last time she called. 

She lets her mother chatter on for a while, about the cutest bike she got for Holly and how Mike is going to be a senior and she can't believe it, Dad got a great bonus this year, and the decorations all look beautiful. Nancy mostly just listens. She feels a rift between them of increasing size, the gap getting wider and wider with the unspoken knowledge that Nancy will not be home for Christmas, not this year, just like last year, and the year before. 

Her mother doesn't understand and she's given up on trying to explain why she can't go back to Hawkins, because doing so would require a discussion on horrifying monsters and dead best friends and all sorts of emotions that Nancy can't revisit. It's why she went away to Chicago for college as soon as she could, why she finished in two years and moved to New York, and why she hasn't been back since. Everything that was wrong in her life came from Hawkins, Indiana, and she doesn't really give a damn if she's running from her problems by moving far, far away from there.

"Are you going to be all alone for Christmas?" 

"Mom, I don't—" She's embarrassed, but the answer is yes. "I don't know. I haven't made any plans." 

"Oh my goodness, Nancy, I know just the thing." Her mother's voice turns up excitedly. "I just remembered—I was talking to the Harringtons at the store last week and they told me that Steve and one of your old friends just moved to New York. You should get together with them. I'm sure there are no hard feelings with Steve by now." 

"What?" It's the last thing she was expecting to hear. "Who's the friend?"

"Oh, you know the one who used to work at the ice cream shop with him. I can't remember her name for the life of me. In any case, I've got Steve's new number here if you want it. You shouldn't be all by yourself for the holidays, honey." 

Someone taps on the glass of the phonebooth abruptly, a scowling man in a suit and coat who looks like an outright joy at parties, and gestures at his watch impatiently. Nancy glares at him, takes her pen and notebook from her pocket, and says, "Okay. Go ahead."

| | |

Her editor's not terribly interested in the story—he thinks it'll end up being coincidence murders and that'll be the end of it, but, "This week's issue is skinny." He sends it off to print and tells her to go home and enjoy the holiday, damn it.

Nancy pretends like she has a holiday to enjoy and leaves, making a brief stop at her desk with Steve Harrington's number in hand. She hasn't decided whether she wants to call or not; it feels desperate, like she's making a last-ditch effort for human contact and he'll see right through it. But if she's being honest with herself, the prospect of social interaction is more tempting than she thought it would be, even if the friends in question will most certainly dredge up bad memories. Her time in New York has been exceedingly lonely. 

And what about Robin? Nancy's sure that that's the girl from the ice cream shop. They were never really friends. Come to think of it, she and Steve are probably dating now; why else would they go to New York together? It's a recipe for third-wheeling. 

She wants to leave, but after a seeming eternity of staring at the phone, she snatches up the receiver and dials the number. 

"Hello?" 

It's a female voice. Maybe Robin, but Nancy can't remember her voice well enough to be sure. "Hi, is this Robin?"

"Yeah—who's this?"

"It's Nancy," she says, curling the phone cord around her finger. "Nancy Wheeler? I don't know if you remember me—"

"I remember." There's a too-long pause. "Are you okay?"

"What? Oh, yeah, of course. Er, I was just calling because I heard you and Steve were in town, and I was wondering if you wanted to catch up sometime?" 

God, she hasn't felt this awkward since high school. 

"Um, sure." Robin sounds taken aback, but genuine. "Yeah, that sounds really great. It's nice to be around people who know—you know."

Nancy knows. She's talking about the monsters they all left behind in Hawkins. And although Nancy's gotten as far from them as possible, she has to admit that Robin's right—it is nice to be with people who understand. Since moving away, she's spent night after night lying in bed after her nightmares feeling terribly alone, head swimming with memories of the Mind Flayer and Demo-dogs and the knowledge that she can't talk about them to anyone within a thousand miles of her. Sometimes she wonders if she made it all up. 

"I know."

| | |

It's how Nancy finds herself buzzing the door of an apartment building in Greenwich Village that evening at seven-thirty, a bottle of wine tucked under her arm. Someone buzzes her in without asking who it is. The building itself is charmingly ugly, with dark wood and dull gray wallpaper lining the narrow hallway and staircase. She ascends to the third floor and finds the Buckley/Harrington residence at the end of the hall. Swallowing a strange apprehension, she knocks on the door.

Steve opens it, which was her worst fear—she was imagining that he'd look at her with disdain and slam it in her face for some reason, but instead he lights up with excitement. "Nance!" 

He wraps her in a quick hug, and as if on cue, she instantly feels sixteen again in the worst way. But it only lasts a moment. As soon as Steve lets go the memory fades and she shakes herself back into the present: they're all just normal friends, catching up on the years apart, enjoying the holiday. She laughs and it doesn't feel forced.

"It's nice to see you too, Steve." Nancy holds the bottle out ceremoniously. "I got you guys an apartment warming-slash-Christmas present."

He takes the bottle and inspects it with one eyebrow comically raised. "Geez, Nance, it really has been a while if you think our taste is this expensive." 

She rolls her eyes and takes her coat off, hanging it carefully on the hook by the door (she really doesn't want to draw attention to the .22 she carries with her everywhere, nestled in her inside left pocket, although she imagines that Steve and Robin would understand the desire to be armed more than most). "Good one. So, do I get a tour?"

"Well, there's not much to tour, but I'll give it my best shot." Steve gestures for her to follow him out of the short entranceway into the main room, waving one arm grandly. "Feast your eyes on the smallest kitchen known to man, our woefully undecorated living room, and a table we may or may not have found on the curb yesterday. Bathroom's right over here." 

The kitchen is as tiny as he describes, with the stove, refrigerator, and sink stuffed into one corner like jagged teeth. The living room is bare but for a long leather sofa and a TV propped on a milk crate. The dining table is cute, at least, but from the buffed-out scratches Nancy can't tell if filching it off the street was a joke or not. 

Steve opens a door on the left and flicks the light on. "This one's my room, and Buckley's on that side." He points back to a closed door on the right side of the living room. Steve's room isn't much but a bed and a dresser yet, but she notices a familiar bat full of nails propped up against the radiator and can't help but smirk. A beat late, she realizes that they're indeed in two separate bedrooms, which pokes a bit of a hole in her dating theory, but she decides there's no way to ask without seeming nosy or overly interested.

As Steve goes to look for wine glasses Robin emerges from her room, rubbing her wet hair with a towel. Nancy thinks she looks disconcertingly similar to that night in the Starcourt mall; her hair is roughly the same length and her build and height are how Nancy remembers—a little taller than her, slim legs, long limbs. Steve, at least, looks somewhat different: he's cut the famous Harrington mane some without sacrificing too much of his beloved volume, and his cheeks have lost those final traces of baby fat. He looks older, like he might be someone else by now. But Robin is eerily true to memory. 

"Oh, shoot, have you been here long?" Robin asks. "Steve, you're making me look like a bad host." 

"It's not my fault you take three years to shower," Steve quips. He lines three glasses up on the counter and half-fills each with wine. "Now get over here and have some fancy-Nancy wine." 

It's all mercilessly less awkward than Nancy feared. They settle down around the table and let the details of their new lives come out slowly in conversation: Steve is bartending at night and taking day classes at the teacher's college. Robin is playing music in all sorts of places and trying to break into the film score business. Neither of them talk about why they left Hawkins, but the way they dance around the topic suggests to Nancy that she might not be the only one who's left some demons back there. 

"So, Nance, what're you reporting on now?" 

"Well, it's not exactly on-brand for Christmas Eve dinner," she replies, smirking humorlessly. "There've been some weird murders recently. The cops won't look into it, but I think it's all the same guy. The article I wrote on it just hit print today." 

"What, like a serial killer?" Steve looks more shocked than she expected. 

"Maybe." She takes a cool sip from her glass. "We won't know for a while, but I'm trying to get out in front of it. I have a really, really strong feeling that it's one killer." 

"Why's that?" Robin's face is straight out of a horror movie audience: eyes wide, eyebrows high.

"The bodies are all the same. Young women, strangled, dismembered after death. Five of them like that in the last month. There's no way it's a coincidence, so I'm going after this story until the cops wake up and take this seriously." 

"And this doesn't...scare you?" Robin asks, spinning her glass nervously between her fingers. "Chasing a killer?" 

"I've been up against a lot worse than one dude with a knife." She smiles colorlessly.

| | |

By the time the bottle's empty it's far too late for Nancy to go home ("Especially not with the NYC Ted Bundy crawling around," Steve slurs), so she agrees to stay. Against her best protests, Steve makes her take his room while he sleeps on the couch, and Robin forces her to accept pajamas from her dresser—they're both unwaveringly hospitable.

Nancy discovers that Robin's room is a little more put-together than Steve's; there are shelves up, already lined with books and records, and an electric keyboard on the floor makes for a nice accent piece. Robin's put lamps with soft yellow light on the bedside table and dresser and Nancy immediately feels sleepy when she enters the warm, dim room. 

"Any preferences?" Robin asks, bending down to paw through the dresser drawers. 

"Anything's fine," Nancy says, leaning against the doorjamb. She hears Steve shut the bathroom door and realizes that this might be her only chance to chat with Robin alone. "Can I ask you something? And you totally don't have to answer." 

"Shoot." 

"Are you and Steve... a thing?" 

Robin laughs softly and straightens up, handing Nancy a pair of sweatpants and a Hawkins High School gym shirt. "I don't swing that way, Wheeler. Merry Christmas."


	2. friends in low places

Her nightmare is different that night. She's running through the halls of Hawkins Memorial Hospital as she has in countless dreams before, stumbling under the flickering fluorescent lights and slipping in blood, crumbling under that distinct dream-feeling that something is chasing her just out of sight. But unlike most nights, the presence behind her feels human, not monster. She pushes open the door at the end of a long hallway and runs into a dark stairwell. Just as she starts to make out the figure of a man standing on the bottom landing, looking up at her, she wakes up. 

She opens her eyes and stares at an unfamiliar ceiling. Gradually, her head swimming with the strange nightmare and maybe a bit of wine-drunkenness from the night before, everything comes back to her: Steve, Robin, their Christmas Eve get-together. Snow is starting to fall lightly outside the window. Nancy gets up slowly, feeling a bit nauseous but otherwise well-rested and content, and pokes her head out into the living room. Steve is sleeping soundly on the couch, one leg thrown awkwardly over the back of it.

If Steve is anything like he was in high school, he could sleep well into the afternoon if he isn't woken up (forcefully). She pauses in the doorway for a while, wondering if she should just slip out before either of her hosts wake up. It wouldn't exactly be in the Christmas spirit, but she has no way of knowing when they'll be up and isn't sure if leaving now is more impolite than waking them up. The choice is made for her when Robin's bedroom door opens.

As soon as they meet eyes, Nancy remembers what Robin told her last night: "I don't swing that way, Wheeler." At the time Nancy hadn't had much of a reaction—the wine was getting to her and she just wanted to sleep, and it wasn't until she settled down in Steve's bed that she realized exactly what Robin meant by that. Now, she feels a bit of color in her cheeks as Robin looks at her quizzically. 

"You okay?"

"Um, yeah, never better," Nancy says quickly. As an afterthought: "Merry Christmas."

"Merry Christmas," Robin half-says, half-yawns, stretching her arms over her head. Her shirt rides up an inch or two. "Coffee?"

"That'd be great." Nancy sits down at the table, glad that Robin's turned away now to fiddle with the coffee machine. 

"So, any fun Christmas plans?" 

Nancy lets out a sarcastic laugh. "No, not fun. I was probably going to be home reading all day if I hadn't come over here." 

"Reading what?" The coffee machine starts to gurgle. Robin digs through the cabinet and comes down with two mugs. 

"The news, probably," she admits.

Robin turns to face her with a little smirk. "Is your whole life just newspapers, Wheeler?" 

She knows that she's poking fun, but if she's being honest with herself, Nancy figures that that's close to the truth. What else does she do besides read the paper and chase stories? Being around other people her age for the first time in a while is making her slowly realize how _boring_ her life is. 

"Close enough," she says after a while. Something in her tone makes Robin pause with one hand on the coffee pot. 

"Well, then, you've got to get out more," she says, coming to the table with both mugs and a half-gallon of creamer balanced in both hands. "Come out with us sometime to the Black Eye." 

"The what?"

"It's the bar Steve works at." Robin puts a dash of cream in her coffee, barely enough to change the color. "It's always a good time. Live bands, people our age, cheap drinks." 

Nancy can't help but think about the last time she went out drinking with Steve—that awful high school Halloween party that ended up ruining them. But that was years ago. They're grown-ups now, and nothing about last night suggested that Steve had any ill-will towards her. "Sure, let's do it."

"Great, we're heading over there tomorrow night to see Sonic Youth. Don't flake on us, alright?" 

She has no interest in flaking out on the first friends she's had in too long, even if a crowded bar and a punk band is far from Nancy's taste. "I'll be there."

| | |

Another night, another nightmare. This time when she wakes up the ceiling is familiar; she's back home in her apartment again, where she spent the remainder of Christmas alone, doing exactly what she predicted. When she had left yesterday, Robin had said, "Before you go, please promise me you're not really going to go home and read the news all day." And Nancy had smiled and promised, but it didn't take long in her quiet, boring apartment before she gave in and checked the trades.

Fortunately for her, Christmas is over and it's time to head back into the office, where she can bury herself in her work and pretend her life hasn't become painfully dull. On her way to the train she picks up a copy of the paper she writes for and finds that her article has clocked in on the third page, topping the crime section: "Five Dismembered Women Have Turned Up in New York this Month, and Your Precinct Might Not Care." 

Not the nicest title, but she knows what sells. She counts two people reading it on the train. At the office, one of her coworkers asks her about it in the elevator, which has definitely never happened before. She doesn't want to count her chickens before they hatch, but a flutter of anticipation is starting to brew in her—has she really found her career-defining story at twenty-two? 

Any excitement comes crashing down as soon as the elevator arrives at their floor. The editor is standing in the doorway of his office and gestures for her to follow him inside, now. 

"Good morning, Mr. Dawkins," Nancy says cautiously, dropping into one of the seats in front of his desk. 

"To hell with a good morning. Do you have any idea why _this_ showed up in our mailbag this morning?" Dawkins leans over and slaps a thrice-folded letter down in front of her on the desk. She opens it like it's a bomb, slowly unfolding the edges, and is met with a block of neatly-typed black text.

Dear Ms. Wheeler,

I read your article and must say that I'm deeply flattered by your interest in my work. You put it together before the police did, and I applaud your effort and wit. Indeed, I think that we could have a very special relationship. Intelligence like yours doesn't come often. 

For this, I would like to communicate through you, with the expectation that you print my letters in your fine paper, the New York Chronicle. Wasn't that the point of writing your article in the first place? So that people will know about me? Well, I think that's a grand idea. Let them know. It's more fun this way. 

I imagine that you will contact the police soon after receiving this. By all means, please do. They will almost certainly be skeptical of my authenticity, so I have provided some proof. 

I will be back by Sunday morning. How quickly do you think they can find me? 

Warm wishes,

A friend.

Her hands start shaking halfway through, and by the time she reads the sign-off, she nearly tears the page two. "Proof?" Her mouth feels terribly dry all of a sudden. 

"Look at this," Dawkins growls, pushing a credit card across the desk to her and tapping the name on the front with his fingernail. 

"Carol Jackson," Nancy reads. A beat later, it clicks: "The third victim." 

"Yeah, the third goddamn victim." Dawkins sinks back into his chair, rubbing his brow in exasperation. "Just tell me you don't have anything to do with this." 

" _Why_ would I have anything to do with this?"

He puts up his hands and motions for her to calm down, which only makes her seethe more. "I just have to ask, alright? Because if it's not you drumming up publicity, then we've got two alternative explanations here. Either Carol Jackson had a sick fuck of a friend holding onto her credit card, or that murdering son of a bitch really wrote that himself."

"We need to call the police." Nancy drops the letter as if it burns. "There could be fingerprints on this." 

"Let's not be so hasty." Dawkins fumbles for a cigarette—from the smell of his office, it's not the first one this morning—and lights it with a haughty flick of his lighter. "We don't know if it's real, and I can't afford to have cops crawling in and out of here distracting my employees." 

She can't disguise the incredulous look on her face. "You cannot be serious." 

"Oh, I'm serious," he says. "We've got papers to sell, Wheeler. And unless this is going to translate into better business, I'm not going to be at the beck and call of this freak."

"Mr. Dawkins, _nothing_ sells more papers than a killer," she urges. "Think of Zodiac and the _San Francisco Chronicle_. Think of Son of Sam and the _Daily News_. If we publish these letters, we're going to be selling out. And the more letters he sends, the better the chance that the police catch him. What's the downside?"

He mulls this over for a moment, half-glaring at her through a tuft of cigarette smoke. Then, finally: "Alright, damn it. Get the cops on the phone."

| | |

The rest of the day is a blur of police (who suspect that she fabricated the letter at first, too, until the victim's credit card comes out and they turn their narrowed eyes away from her). The officer in charge, Detective Redding of the Ninth Precinct, barely speaks to her; he's either incredibly dismissive of women or incredibly bad at his job, and in either scenario, Nancy isn't excited to be working with him. Although the letter is addressed directly to her, he relays nearly all of his instructions to Dawkins before he and his officers leave for the day.

On his way out, his only words to her are, "Any more letters and you call us. I don't want to see them in the paper unless I tell you to print 'em." 

She doesn't respond with anything but a scowl. 

The letter from "a friend" gets sent to print, and as soon as Dawkins returns to his office, Nancy goes to her desk and copies the letter's contents in her notebook. When she's done she stares at it, waiting for some grand revelation or clue to float up to her, but nothing sticks out. Whoever wrote it was exceedingly careful not to let any distinguishing or revealing facts slip into the curt language. 

The only realization that comes from this is sobering: an actual serial killer, who has murdered five women, maybe more, knows her by name now. She knows that this should scare her. It should scare the shit out of her. But the only feeling that comes to her is the shadow of a thrill she hasn't felt in a long, long time, not since she was a teenager with a shotgun and a monster problem—the threat of danger.

| | |

In all the commotion, she nearly forgets that she promised Robin she'd go out with them to the Black Eye; she only remembers when the address, which Robin had scribbled down on a scrap of a Chinese takeout menu for her, falls out of the front fold of her notebook. Hell's Kitchen, 52nd Street. At five o'clock she throws her increasingly scattered notes into her bag and hurries out of the office.

She hadn't been thrilled about the outing initially, but now it's a welcome distraction from the stressful day. She only has enough time to go home and change into something she thinks is normal attire for a punk bar, although she has virtually no reference point for this, and then head uptown to the Black Eye. It's dark outside by the time she steps out from the station on 50th. The whole walk to the venue, she throws glances back over her shoulder, one hand in her coat pocket and wrapped around the handle of the .22. Maybe it's all in her head, but she feels watched. 

People are pouring into the Black Eye when she finds it, adorned in all sorts of leather and spiked jewelry that make her feel severely underdressed in a modest dark turtleneck. Nancy nearly walks right past Robin, waiting for her in the mouth of the alley next door, a cigarette in her mouth and her hands buried in the pockets of an oversized tan trenchcoat. 

"Come on, this way." Robin grinds the cigarette under the heel of her boot and gestures for Nancy to follow her into the alley, which looks comically unsafe and skeezy. "Relax, it's the employee entrance. Steve's on bar tonight so we're good." 

"Why are we going this way?" Nancy asks, watching Robin force a half-stuck door open on the side of the building. 

"Did you see all those people out front? It's a mob. Plus, we're saying hi to Steve."

They emerge in a short, dark hallway. The building is absolutely throbbing with the music blasting in the main room to their right somewhere. Everything smells like clove cigarettes as Robin leads her through another door, this time letting out right behind the bar. The inside of the club is packed from wall-to-wall, the whole mass of people bristling like one strange creature, and Nancy immediately feels the usual anxiety she gets around big crowds. 

Steve's hair flops towards them; it's all she can make out about him in the low light and haze of smoke. As if acting on a cue, he pushes two drinks into their hands, leans in, and shouts, "Don't have too much fun without me, ladies." 

"No promises," she thinks Robin says, but she can't be sure. Right at that moment, the DJ steps away from the stage, signaling that the headlining act is on its way up. The crowd roars in anticipation. Robin takes her by the arm and pulls her out onto the main floor, elbowing up to the front of the stage as the band comes out.

Nancy came with no expectations of enjoying the scene in the slighest, but by the time Sonic Youth launches into their second song, she admits that she hasn't felt this happy and, most of all, _normal_ in far too long. The music is too loud to think and the drink is just strong enough to send a warm, content feeling through her; she's having fun.

Robin's singing along, endearingly serious: _"Close your eyes and make believe, you can do whatever you please!"_

| | |

The night gets away from her. A few songs turn into the whole set and then the encore, and after that the DJ is back and Robin pleads with her to stay till close, because Steve doesn't get off till then and she'll be all alone. It doesn't take much convincing; Nancy's not keen on walking home alone tonight anyway, even if she will hate herself when she has to get up for work tomorrow.

She follows Robin out to the alley for a smoke break, politely declining the clove Robin offers her and privately wondering when former high school band nerd Robin Buckley took up smoking at all. Nancy still thinks that Robin looks a lot like she did back in Hawkins, physically at least, but something's changed about her that Nancy can't put her finger on. She's quieter, maybe, more reserved. Self-assured. 

"Do you and Steve party like this often?" Nancy asks. She leans up against the door to get away from the wind whipping through the alley.

"Not too much," Robin answers, struggling to light the cigarette under a cupped hand. "Steve's here for work, of course. And I come out if the show's good. It's not your crowd, huh?"

"No, I like it, I swear," Nancy assures her. She looks down at her drink—she thinks it's the fourth one tonight?—and chews on her words for a while. "I needed a night out." 

"Tough day at the office?"

"Yeah," she laughs, a little harshly. "You could say that. I just... I think something's wrong with me." 

"What?" Robin looks at her with genuine concern. Two lonely years in New York and Nancy can't remember the last time someone looked at her like that.

"This story I'm chasing—the killer—it's getting real," Nancy says, both hands holding onto her drink like it's a life raft. "He sent a letter to our paper today, saying he's going to kill again. And he addressed it to me." 

"Jesus Christ, Nancy. But why's that mean something's wrong with you?" 

Nancy watches the end of the cigarette in her fingers, the one point of light in the darkness between them. "Because I'm not as scared as I should be. Why aren't I scared?" 

For this, Robin has no answer.

| | |

At two-thirty Steve meets them outside, wrapped up in a thick puffer jacket, and he and Robin insist on taking Nancy home even though it's completely out of their way. Nancy protests half-heartedly, but after hearing about the letter from the killer, Robin won't budge. ("If you're not going to be scared, then we'll be scared for you, Wheeler.")

Of course, getting back to Nancy's apartment on the Lower East Side ends up taking ages; the trains take forever at this time of night and it's slow-going on the icy sidewalks. By the time they arrive at her door, Steve announces that they'll be staying the night. Robin thinks that it's a grand idea. 

"You know it's just a studio, right?" Nancy warns them, fumbling for her keys. 

"At this point, I will happily sleep on your floor before I make the trip back home, Nance," Steve yawns. Robin just puts her hands up with a "Hey, what can you do?" expression. 

"If you say so," she sighs, letting them inside. Steve locks himself in the bathroom immediately—"You think I would go to sleep with this much product in my hair?"—and Nancy takes the opportunity to gather up all her spare blankets and duvets into a makeshift sleeping bag for him, piled up at the foot of her bed. 

"Well, I don't have any more comforters," Nancy says to Robin, who's been fiddling with the police radio on the table, a look of mild interest on her face. "I'm sorry. If you don't want to sleep on the bed with me I can try to split these up, maybe?"

Something about her visible anxiety makes Robin smirk. "Come on, Nancy, do you really think I'd ever pass up an opportunity to sleep in a pretty girl's bed?"

Steve comes back into the room and saves Nancy from having to form a coherent response to that, her face flooding with color as Robin's smirk widens. Flopping down on the mass of blankets, Steve says, "You've really outdone yourself, Nance. Better than a couch by a country mile." He seems completely oblivious to how flustered Nancy looks. Robin is _still_ smirking at the table. 

Once they've all finally settled down, Robin a few inches from her in a borrowed set of pajamas, Nancy finds that she can't sleep despite the deep exhaustion settling in her bones. Maybe it's liquor; maybe it's the killer; maybe she's just not used to having people in her space anymore. Could be all of those things. She spends most of the night awake and restless, face buried in her pillow until the slow chorus of Steve and Robin's breathing coaxes her to sleep.


	3. i want to talk about you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> damn quarantine even got me updating fics i thought i'd give up

"Did you know you speak Russian in your sleep?"

It's just past seven; the sun's barely up, Steve's snoring on the floor, and Robin is groggily sitting up in bed, rubbing her hand over her eyes. Nancy watches her from the kitchen counter, waiting for the coffee to finish. 

"What?"

"You were having a nightmare, I think," Nancy explains. "And you started speaking Russian."

"Ah. Well, Russian torture'll do that to you, I guess."

She says it like it's supposed to be a light-hearted thing, but her face doesn't move and Nancy can feel the grain of truth in her voice. She decides not to press the subject and brings Robin a mug of coffee, remembering the dash of cream how she likes it, and joins her on the edge of the bed. That morning she had woken up with one of Robin's arms bravely crossing the distance between them in the sheets, Robin's fingers just barely brushing against her ribs, like she was reaching for her. She decides not to talk about that, either. 

"Did you sleep okay?" 

"Better than ever." Robin takes a grateful sip from the mug, holding it in both hands to warm them. There's always been a terrible chill in Nancy's apartment; she thinks she's used to it by now. "You're not going to be late to work, are you?" 

"No, I'll be fine as long as I leave by 7:45," she guesses. "I'll leave the key for you guys. Don't worry about rushing out of here."

"Thanks. He's probably going to be out for a while," Robin says, tipping her head towards the lump of blankets that Steve is buried in. "And hey, thanks for coming out last night. I had a good time." 

"I did, too." It isn't a lie. 

"I'm usually all by myself while Steve works, so it's nice to have some company," Robin adds, now with a wry smile. "Even if you can't dance to save your life."

| | |

It doesn't take long for nearly every other paper in town to pick up the story— _her_ story—as evidenced by the fact that half of the front-pages she sees on the train have some variation of it. _Friendly Killer Stalks the Big Apple; Well-Mannered Murderer is On the Prowl_.

For a prolonged moment, it becomes very real to her. The killer exists. He could be anywhere. He could be on the train with her, even. 

But she doesn't let her mind dwell there; fear will only slow her down, complicate her work, so she puts her nose up at the idea and walks tall out onto the platform. More headlines pepper her way to the office, and in the elevator, some writers from the politic beat grapple for her attention—"Do you think this story's going to make a splash in the mayoral race? Hey, here's my card." 

In the office, her editor is already worked up and ready to go, puffing on a half-gone cigarette with a deep scowl on his face. "Get the hell in here, Wheeler."

"Any news on the killer?" she asks excitedly. Maybe there was a new note, another clue.

"Nope," Dawkins grunts, dropping into his high-backed chair. "Nothing worth publishing, which is why I need you to get out there and find something for tomorrow's issue." 

"You want me to go on the road?"

"The road, the subway, the bar, fuck it, I don't care." He flips through his Rolodex distractedly. "Just go out there and get me something I can print. We can't sit around all day waiting for your friend to send us another note, and now that every goddamned paper in town is looking into this, we need to make sure people remember it's _our_ case.

"Ah, here it is," he says, taking out a business card with a flourish. "Listen, so you're not all alone out there, I got a kid you should call. He's a photographer, so he'll be useful, too, in case you need any shots for your story. He works cheap. Give him a ring, would you?" 

Wordlessly, she takes the proffered business card, and nearly lets out a very choice expletive. 

_Jonathan Byers, Freelance Photographer. NYU Class of '89._

| | |

If she didn't have Dawkins staring her down through his office window, or the general pressure of getting some new leads on the case, she probably wouldn't have called him at all. Or at least, put it off until 4:55. But now Dawkins is rapping impatiently on the glass, time is ticking, and she dials the number.

"Hello?" 

"Jonathan?" He doesn't say anything, so she plunges forward. "Hey, it's... it's Nancy." 

"Hey," he says, sounding stunned. 

"Sorry to call you out of the blue like this." Nancy rolls a pen across her desk anxiously, an odd nervousness collecting in her stomach. "My boss actually said I should call you—I'm working at the _Chronicle_ now, and I've got a big story." 

He's quiet again; she doesn't blame him. "What do you need from me?"

"It'll be kind of like the old days," she tries to joke. "Except instead of monsters, we're looking for a serial killer. I could definitely use some back-up out there. And a good photographer."

"Alright," he says, after yet another painstaking pause. "Let's do it." 

"How soon can you make it downtown?"

| | |

They decide to meet at a diner in SoHo, remarkably ugly next to a boutique shop and a ritzy hair salon. Jonathan is already sitting at the counter with a cup of coffee when Nancy arrives, mercifully unnoticed. She studies him, tracking the changes: he's finally trimmed the boyish haircut she last saw him in, sheared closer on the sides but still hanging onto a flop of copper-colored bangs. As she gets closer, his perpetually sleepless eyes come up to meet hers.

"Nancy," is all he says, and still, immediately, she starts to think about all the ways he's said her name before—in a panic, inches from death, or in immense pain, when she left him, and of course, with love. Everything she thought was buried starts to swim up; when she tries to speak, her throat feels blocked. 

"Jonathan." She sits down next to him. It doesn't take a genius to know that they're both thinking about their last conversation: the big bad break-up. A simpler time. Both freshman in college—Nancy at U. Chicago, Jonathan at NYU. She made it through one month of freedom in the windy city before she realized that the miles between them didn't feel surmountable anymore. She'd called him—still felt shitty about that—on a Sunday morning. They both thought it would be the last time they ever spoke. 

"So, how'd you end up in New York?" he asks, keeping his eyes down.

"The short answer is I did it for my career." 

"And the long answer?" 

She smiles wryly. "You moved away, so you might not understand. But waking up every morning in Hawkins was like—well, you know when you're watching a horror movie, and you're always on the edge of your seat waiting for the killer to jump out? It was like that. Didn't matter if I was in the grocery store in the middle of the goddamn day. I was always waiting for everything to go to shit again."

"So you had to get out," he supplies.

"I had to get out." She thanks the waitress who comes by with a cup of coffee for her. "It wasn't easy. I still get this feeling like, what if the Upside Down opens up again, while I'm all the way out here? What about my brother, and my parents? What if something happens and I can't do anything about it?"

"It's not your job to do anything about it," Jonathan says. "Nancy, we were kids. We shouldn't have been mixed up in that in the first place." 

"We shouldn't have, but we were." She dumps a packet of sugar into her coffee, struggling for words. "Jonathan, before we get to work, I just—I'm sorry about how things turned out with us." 

"Why are you sorry?" He tries to play it cool, but she can see a ghost of hurt over his face.

"We both gave up a lot to be with each other, and it was all for nothing. So I'm sorry." 

He considers this for a while, fidgeting with the camera hanging from a strap around his neck. "It wasn't for nothing, Nancy. And now that that complete bummer of a conversation is over, why don't you brighten the mood and tell me about this killer?"

They share a relieved smile as Nancy cracks her notebook open, walking Jonathan through the first five victims in her convoluted notes. It feels eerily similar to being a couple of teenagers again, desperately trying to fit together the pieces of a multi-dimensional mystery. Jonathan stares at the killer's letter for a long time. 

"He'll be back by Sunday," Jonathan parrots, eyes fixed on the final line of the letter. "Jesus. That barely gives us three days." 

"Yep," she agrees. "Three days and absolutely no leads." 

"There haven't been any clues at all? Nothing at the crime scenes?" 

Nancy sighs and flips back a few pages to the victims, scanning uselessly over the information—of course she has it all memorized. "Nothing that makes any sense. He's doing everything in his power to cover his tracks. I mean, it's a perfect system: he always goes out at night, usually to poorer neighborhoods, finds vulnerable women. It's all over the city. And then—"

She stops so abruptly that Jonathan wonders if she's choking. "Nancy, what?" 

"I just realized something." Almost frantic, she flips to a blank page in her notebook and draws a hasty map of the city. "Look. The first victim, Janet, was found in Manhattan—but her family said that didn't make any sense, because she lives in Brooklyn and hardly ever goes out east. Then, look, the second victim, Beth. She _is_ from Manhattan, but her body was found way up north in the Bronx. The third victim, Carol, she's from the Bronx, but her body turned up in Queens—"

"And the fourth victim was from Queens," Jonathan supplies, catching on. 

"But they found her in Brooklyn." She suddenly feels breathless. "The fifth girl, the one they just found last week—Kate Miller—she works in Brooklyn. They found her right in the middle of Manhattan. Jonathan, it's going in circles, look—Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan." 

Jonathan looks at her with a look she's seen before: his mind is working a mile a minute, this close to a revelation. "Nancy, if you're right, then this Sunday he's going to find a girl in Manhattan." 

"And if we don't stop him she'll end up a corpse in the Bronx." Her brain is working so fast she can hardly keep up with it. "I need to speak to the main detective as soon as possible. He needs to get as many cops as he can in Manhattan." 

"But what are they looking for? I mean, we don't even have a suspect or a description." 

This throws her for a loop briefly. She charges on regardless. "We might not know what he looks like, but we know what the victims look like. Young women, by themselves, usually sex workers. Maybe that'll be enough."

| | |

Jonathan waits against the diner's front window while Nancy shuts herself into the payphone across the street, rapping her fingernails impatiently on the glass. It takes several minutes of connections and irritated demands before the Ninth Precinct connects her to Detective Redding, who sounds less than thrilled to get her call. She recounts her discovery as cogently as possible, forcing herself to speak slowly despite the urgency that's been gripping her since she figured it out.

To her dismay, Redding is unimpressed. "Look, five victims is hardly enough to establish this kind of pattern. Ms. Wheeler, I think you need to leave the detective work to the real detectives."

"You have got to be kidding me. It can't be a coincidence that _all five_ of these women were displaced like this—"

"Of course it can. So what if Carol Jackson is from the Bronx but ended up in Queens? She could have been there for any number of reasons. If the suspect contacts you again, call me. Otherwise, don't waste our time." 

The line clicks. Unable to stop herself, Nancy slams the receiver down hard, such that the little plastic peg that held the phone up snaps and the receiver plunges down to her feet, bouncing pitifully on its cord. She watches it dangle until she feels calm enough to meet back up with Jonathan, who's watching her with a familiar concern. 

"I warned you that he was an asshole," is all she says. He nods in understanding.

"So, what's next?" 

"I don't know," she admits. Then, a flash of an idea comes to her. "Actually—I know exactly what my next article is going to be about."

| | |

She drags Jonathan to her place, only once stopping to consider whether she's overstepping the tepid boundaries of their friendship. At the end of the day, their work is more important than the awkward consequences of being around an ex-boyfriend, so she ignores the general strangeness of their situation and lets him into the apartment. Robin and Steve are gone, fortunately, the blankets all folded haphazardly at the foot of her bed, but Jonathan points them out with a quizzical look.

"Do you get cold often?" he asks, patting the comically large pile of blankets. 

"No, actually—" It occurs to her that Jonathan has no idea about Steve and Robin. Try as she might, she can't remember where Jonathan stands with either of them. She thinks that he and Steve were at least civil last she saw them; nothing in her memory clued her in on whether Jonathan and Robin were ever friends to begin with. She figures it'll all come out sooner or later. "I don't know if you know, but Steve and Robin are in town." 

"Holy shit." Jonathan sinks down onto the bed, obviously mulling over some follow-up questions. "Uh, just visiting? Or...?"

"No, they live here," she says. "I mean, not _here_. They're roommates. They just stayed over last night." 

"Roommates?" He raises one eyebrow knowingly.

"Trust me, it's not like that." She laughs just remembering her awkward question to Robin about her and Steve. "I thought they were dating, too. But they're just good friends." 

"So, you and Steve...?" Jonathan trails off when he realizes how obtrusive he's being. "I'm sorry, you don't have to answer that, that's way out of line—"

"No, it's fine. There's nothing going on with us, either. It's like I said. Good friends." 

Before Jonathan can respond, the landline on her bedside table rings. A sudden feeling of dread comes over her as she picks up the receiver, but it's just Steve, sounding much more cheerful than he did last night as he collapsed onto her floor. 

"Nance, you free tonight?" 

"Well, sort of." She glances back at Jonathan, who's respectfully keeping himself busy to at least look like he's not eavesdropping. "What's up?"

"Robin's got her gig at a jazz bar tonight. I was wondering if you wanted to come hear her play. She's the best, and we'll get some free drinks out of it." 

To her surprise, it _does_ sound appealing; she's never heard Robin play, but by all accounts she's quite a talent. She looks at Jonathan again. "Yeah, I'd like to go, but—this is going to sound crazy. Can Jonathan come?" 

"Jonathan—like, Byers? Hawkins Jonathan?" Steve sounds appropriately dumbstruck. 

"I was surprised, too," she says. "It's a long story, but we're working together now. It could be fun, right? Hawkins monster hunter reunion?" 

Her attempt at a joke comes out too anxiously to land. Steve mulls it over. Then, finally: "Screw it. The more the merrier."

| | |

The jazz bar in question sits at the bottom of a steep staircase in Greenwich Village, the actual epitome of an underground place. The bouncer at the door gives Nancy and Jonathan a stiff nod as they pass. An almost nauseating wave of smoke hits them instantly, but other than that, the inside of the club is warm and inviting. Candle-lit tables take up one side of the room while an ornate, polished bar takes up the other. At the head of the room, on a slightly raised dais, a three-piece jazz combo plays on. The drummer and bassist are both hard to make out in the haze of smoke, but Nancy would recognize the girl at the piano anywhere.

Robin doesn't look up when they enter; she doesn't seem to be looking anywhere, actually. Nancy considers herself a good writer, but she doesn't think she'd ever be able to describe the look on Robin's face at the piano. Impressively, she doesn't seem to need to look at the keys as she plays. Instead her gaze is somewhere far away, looking out over the glossy lid of the piano at nothing in particular, her eyes almost cloudy with some private feeling. Her hair, usually falling in a controlled mess around her face, is pulled back in a neat concert bun. For the first time, she thinks, Nancy can really see Robin: the confident swoop of her jaw, her sharp eyebrows, the easy set in her lips. It makes Nancy falter.

"Nancy? Look, Steve's over there." Jonathan gently taps her shoulder, then leads the way to the bar, where Steve is waiting. He's a little more dressed up than usual, matching the vibe of the club in a clean button-down and his dad's old watch. 

"Jonathan," Steve says. If he's wary about the reunion, he doesn't show it. He shakes Jonathan's hand and gives Nancy a quick hug before they all settle back down at the bar. "Hey, Tim, they're with me," Steve says to the bartender, motioning to the new arrivals. The bartender nods and returns with a round of beers for the three of them. 

"So, what do you think?" Steve asks, gesturing around the bar. "Not bad, right?" 

"You were right—she's amazing," Nancy says. After a beat, she realizes that Steve is referencing the club itself, not just Robin. "I mean, yeah, it's great." 

At the stage, the band transitions into a ballad. Robin rolls her head slightly to the side, eyes closed now, her hands moving languidly over the keys. It's engrossing; Nancy barely pays attention to Steve and Jonathan while they catch up with each other, exchanging their reasons for ending up in New York and laughing at how screwed-up their high school years were. Nancy only breaks her stare when, with a relaxed flourish of notes and a long roll on the cymbals, the band finishes their set. Light applause breaks out. Robin stands up and meets Nancy's eyes for just a second, and the moment is gone. 

Robin joins them at the bar, looking somewhat uncomfortable in her modest black dress—Nancy would bet that it wasn't her choice of wardrobe, but it fits the clean look of the band nicely. The bartender appears with a rum and coke before Robin even has to ask. She sips it down in almost one go. 

"Hey, guys, thanks for coming," Robin says, almost sounding embarrassed. "I know it's not super exciting or anything, but—"

"It was great," Nancy assures her. The beer's taken some of her reservations away, she thinks, because she continues, "You're a really incredible pianist, Robin." 

Maybe it could have passed as a warm comment between friends, but the earnest look in her eyes makes Robin take pause. Steve jumps in before either of them can dwell on the exchange. 

"Can you guys believe it, the four of us together?" Steve's two beers in and starting to get into his the-world-is-great-let's-all-be-friends mode. "And all it took was a serial killer!"

The laughter fully dissolves whatever was starting to pass between Nancy and Robin. The four friends settle into a groove, chatting, drinking, hardly reminiscing (the good times in Hawkins were few and far between, it seems like), but Nancy still finds herself stealing glances at Robin. It feels like she's found a new side of her, and the fun, dorky girl from her hometown has been replaced with someone Nancy wants very much to know. 

After twenty minutes Robin slides her emptied glass back across the bar—the long curve of her arm has Nancy losing her focus all over again—and gets to her feet. "Well, break's over. Got to get back. If you guys leave before I'm done, really, I seriously appreciate you coming. See you." 

She heads back to the piano, but not before giving Nancy's arm a squeeze that Nancy will most certainly turn over in her mind later. Steve looks at her expectantly. "What do you say, Nance? Are we staying for the rest?"

She looks at Jonathan, who just shrugs. "Sure. Why not?" 

They stay like that well into the night, a little drunk but still content. When they run out of conversation, they all turn and watch the band play; at least, she figures Steve and Jonathan are watching the band. If she's being honest with herself, she's only watching one member.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my fave trope ever is nancy being very gay and not knowing it because she's a froot loop ok bye


	4. creepin'

By Sunday, it feels like the world has turned upside down again. Any fleeting happiness at that little jazz bar in Greenwich Village is long gone when Nancy goes into the office Monday morning, a pit of dread forming in her stomach. 

"Wheeler!" Dawkins is barking at her as soon as she crosses the threshold. The pit deepens. With a deep breath to steady herself, she heads into the editor's office and sits down.

"There's another letter, isn't there?" she asks. "He promised he'd be back yesterday." 

"Bingo." Dawkins looks as high-strung as ever as he pushes a trifold letter to her across the desktop. 

Ms. Wheeler,

I fear that I may have overestimated you. Sunday's come and gone and my hands are bloodied once again. I thought that you might figure me out by now. I know you can. Keep trying. 

In any case, I won't let you know when I'll be back again — that's no fun. But I know you need something good for the papers, so I'll give you a little clue: Be quiet. Read my lips. I'm an open book. 

All my best, 

Your friend.

It's a short letter, so Nancy reads it again, twice, three times, until Dawkins snaps her out of it. "I'm sending it off to print. What else you got on this, Wheeler?" 

"I think I've figured out a pattern," she explains. "He's got a specific way of dumping bodies." 

"Holy hell, did you tell the police?" 

"Yeah, and they shot me down." She pauses, then fixes him with a sly look. "But I'm sure it'll make for a good article still, right?" 

He considers this, eyeing her over an unlit cigarette. After a while, he shrugs and flicks his lighter open. "Fuck it, do whatever you want. You've got this damn paper flying off the shelves with this Friendly Killer business. Keep it up, kid." 

"Friendly Killer?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah, you know all the good serial killers have got a nickname. That's the one sticking in all the papers. And this is our story, so you better use it. Go remind them who's got this son of a bitch on the line!"

| | |

Nancy's working on a particularly scathing article about the police's general ineptitude when the news comes in: the sixth victim is found. As expected, the police find the body in the Bronx, right near the Triborough Bridge. That's all the information they have for now, but Nancy knows in her gut that the girl will be from Manhattan. The pattern is true. She knows it is.

She bangs out an article to go with the letter in record time—she's always been a better writer when she's a little ticked off. Just as she's getting ready to pack it in for the day, maybe to call Jonathan and tell him about the new letter, the phone on her desk rings shrilly. "Hello?" 

"Nance." It's Robin, saying her name like a warm greeting. "Do you know what day it is?" 

"Uh, no? Should I?" Strange anticipation is starting to roll through her.

"Jeez, you really need to get out more," Robin says, some laughter bubbling under her words. "It's New Year's Eve, Wheeler. Come on. You, me, Steve, Jonathan. We're partying tonight." 

Nancy looks at her desk calendar in disbelief. Sure enough, it's the 31st—what a week it's been, she thinks. The deeper she gets into this case, the more removed she feels from real life. God, she needs some sleep. "What did you have in mind?" 

"The Black Eye is going to be nuts," Robin promises. "And Steve's not even working tonight, so we can all hang out. Invite Jonathan, okay? It's going to be a blast." 

Her voice is so endearingly sincere that Nancy can't help but smile. "Okay, sure. Let's do it." 

"Sweet. Meet us at our place tonight, ten-thirty."

| | |

Jonathan, it turns out, is game for a New Year's outing—much like Nancy, he doesn't have much going on in the friends department. He agrees to meet her at her apartment so that they can talk about the killer's most recent letter and then head to Steve and Robin's together. (Nancy suggests this as if it's just a normal, sensible arrangement, but if she's being honest, she doesn't like the idea of going anywhere at night anymore, not by herself, at least.)

Even though she's expecting him, Jonathan's knock on the door that evening makes her jump and nearly drop a cup of coffee all over her notes. She checks the peephole before letting him in, his shoulders sprinkled with fresh snow, and immediately feels better. Recently she can hardly stand being in her apartment by herself; even as small as it is, every shadow makes her heart pound with the fear that she isn't alone after all. 

"'Be quiet. Read my lips. I'm an open book,'" Jonathan reads, now settled in at the table with a copy of the new letter. "What the hell does that mean?" 

"I don't know." Nancy sits down across from him, pen poised over her own copy. "I think it has to do with Queens, right? If the pattern checks out, then the next victim's going to turn up in Queens." 

"Maybe it doesn't have anything to do with the victims," Jonathan muses. "I mean, maybe it's about him. It's a clue about his identity." 

"Well, it's a shitty clue," she quips, shutting her notebook. "Come on, we should get going. The trains are going to be hell tonight." 

There's no shortage of people on the streets as Jonathan and Nancy make their way to the station on East Broadway. Most people are on their way to Times Square, fortunately, and they face less resistance as they cut west to Greenwich Village. A light dusting of snow accompanies them to Steve and Robin's door. 

Steve greets them in oversized plastic glasses in the shape of the year 1990; Robin, who's busily filling a flask in the background, has a similar year design on a glittery red headband. Nancy and Jonathan aren't nearly as festive, which Steve takes personal offense to. 

"We're not going anywhere until you two get some goddamn holiday spirit," he declares. From the hint of beer on his breath, Nancy guesses he's already started celebrating a while ago. "Robin, please, they look like they're going to Thanksgiving dinner." 

"Sorry, but I have to agree with Harrington here," Robin sighs. She digs through a Rite Aid bag and returns with another pair of 1990-glasses for Jonathan and a headband for Nancy. "These are non-negotiable." 

Faking reluctance, Nancy puts the headband on, feeling silly in the best way. Jonathan awkwardly fits the glasses on. "So, what's the plan tonight?" 

"A New Year's Party that's going to blow the Ball Drop out of the water," Steve promises, causing Robin to roll her eyes behind him. She caps the flask and tucks it into her coat pocket. Jonathan shoots Nancy a look that asks what the hell she's getting him into. She shrugs back.

It's so goddamn cold out that they end up splitting a cab, with Steve bravely volunteering to sit up front next to the irritated-looking driver. Packed in between Jonathan and Robin, Nancy watches the city slide by through the front windshield as they make slow progress towards Hell's Kitchen. Robin hands her the flask from her coat with a sly wink; unable to hold back a charmed smile, Nancy accepts and takes a quick swig of what she thinks is tequila, but could just as well be some kind of distilled lighter fluid, judging by how god awful it is. 

Feeling warmer and relaxed, she's almost sad to bid the cozy cab goodbye when they arrive at the Black Eye. A line stretches from the front door down to the corner of the block—maybe Steve is right about this party after all. Steve hands the driver his fare while Robin helps Nancy out of the cab (and is Nancy imagining things, or does Robin's hand linger on hers longer than it needs to?). Shaking out his long legs after the cramped drive, Steve hops to the front of the group, gesturing for them to follow. "We're V.I.P.s tonight, kiddos. You're welcome." 

Just like last time, they cut down the side of the building and use the employee entrance at the end of the alley. The DJ's set is already roaring through the thin walls of the club atop a wave of crowd noise and the stench of hard liquor. As they shuffle their way into the main room, Nancy feels Robin's hand on the small of her back for a second before it's gone again. Something electric passes through her, and she doesn't know if it's from the atmosphere of the club or not. She doesn't really want to know.

| | |

Drinks, dancing, a thrum of people far exceeding the maximum occupancy of the building. It's a perfect recipe for her to lose herself in the moment, something she so rarely gets to do. By the time the New Year is within striking distance, Nancy can't believe that any time has passed at all. A new surge of energy brews on the crowded dancefloor; the New Year's countdown is beginning shortly.

Someone hands her a drink. On the deejay's table at the head of the club, a shitty television set is tuned to the Ball Drop in Times Square, where a tuxedoed man stands shivering under the lights. Yellow numbers appear on the screen, superimposed over his TV-ready smile. 10. 9. 8. 7. 6.

On 5, a rush of anxiety overcomes her, so swiftly and powerfully that her arm falls limp to her side, spilling the drink all over the sticky floor. No one seems to notice. 4. 3. 2. She wonders where the killer is right now, if he's watching the Ball Drop on his own crappy TV, or if he's out there, slipping unnoticed between the throngs of people out celebrating on the streets. If he's already found a girl, if he's following her, if he's hurting her. The throbbing sound around her falls away. Briefly, she's standing in total silence; she hears nothing when the countdown ends, even as Steve, Jonathan, and Robin erupt in cheers around her, even when one of them—she can't say who—envelopes her in a thrashing hug. 

She thinks she might be losing her mind. 

Sound comes back all at once. Her head feels like it might split in two. Wincing, she says to no one in particular, "I need to get some air," and pushes her way back outside, to the alley. The cold air hits her twice as hard as the sound did, but it's clarifying, too. She puts her hands out, props herself up against the wall of the building next door, and lets her head hang, taking in deep, steadying breaths. 

A hand closes around her waist. 

She spins so fast that it makes her dizzy. Her mind assumes the worst—maybe he's found her. Maybe she's next after all. But when her eyes refocus, it's just Robin, looking down at her with those genuinely concerned eyes that make her chest ache. When's the last time someone cared about her like that? 

"Hey, you okay?" Robin puts her hands out to steady her, holding her by the tops of her arms. 

"I feel kind of sick," she admits. "I'll be fine." 

Robin doesn't look convinced, but she lets go of Nancy's arms and pivots to lean against the wall beside her. In the chunk of sky over their heads, fireworks are starting to streak through the gloomy night. Robin lights a cigarette and watches her out of the corner of her eye, silently, which Nancy appreciates. When the world feels like it's stopped wobbling, Nancy turns to her with a weak smile. 

"Thanks for checking up on me," she says. "I know that we weren't friends, you know, back in Hawkins. But I'm really glad we're here now." 

"Me too." Robin sucks pensively at the end of the cigarette, looking like she's trying hard to choose the right words. Eventually she gives up. They lapse into a comfortable silence. At the mouth of the alley, near the street, a couple embraces in a New Year's kiss. More fireworks explode overhead. 

"Do you want to go home?" Robin asks. She's so close that Nancy can smell the sweet herbal smoke that's just rolled off her lips. The couple is still kissing behind them. A hazy, half-formed thought in the back of Nancy's mind wonders what kissing Robin would be like, but she decides that she doesn't have the energy to unpack that thought under the circumstances. 

"Yes, please." 

She waits outside while Robin goes to find the boys, still inside and pounding enough drinks to fitfully ring in the new decade. When the door shuts behind her, Nancy finds that the couple at the end of the alley has left. She's apparently alone now, but with a chill down her spine, she thinks that someone is watching her. There's no one around, but the feeling of eyes on her increases like a heat lamp, gradually coming to a boil. She reaches in her coat absentmindedly for the revolver and realizes that she's left it at home. The anxiety she felt inside is coming back tenfold.

It disappears just as quickly. The side door opens again and Robin returns, alone. "Steve and Jonathan wanted to hang out for a bit, but I can still take you home, if that's okay?" 

"You don't want to stay?" 

"I've had enough fun for one night," she says. And her smile is so easy that Nancy can't help but believe her. 

They hail a cab. This close to midnight, the traffic isn't as bad as before; most everyone is inside celebrating now, so the ride back is better than the ride there. Robin gives the driver the address to Nancy's apartment. Nancy realizes that she's shivering. She can't remember when it started, but it's noticeable enough for Robin to scoot closer to her and throw an arm over her shoulders, as casually as breathing. Their thighs are touching; Nancy feels, miraculously, very safe.

At her apartment, she misses the lock three times before Robin takes the key from her and opens the door herself. Nancy isn't sure if she's drunk or just ill; all she knows is that she wants to go to bed, immediately. She changes her clothes and doesn't care if Robin is looking. Robin, for her part, seems not to take advantage, instead going to the sink for a glass of water and an aspirin. She puts it on the bedside table with a look that says, "You'll thank me in the morning." 

It's then that it occurs to Nancy that Robin's planning to leave—she never took her coat off. "Wait, you can't go." 

"Get some sleep, Nance. I'll come by tomorrow," Robin promises. 

"No," she says. It feels very important that she conveys the right meaning right now, but her words are failing her. "I want you to stay." 

"You sure?" Robin hesitates with one hand on her keys. 

"It's not safe for you to go out alone," Nancy says, after a pause. "And I want you to stay." 

And _I want you to stay_. An essential, potent word. _And._ She doesn't just want Robin there for safety; she just wants her there. Robin seems to understand this. A serene look passes over her face. She drops her keys back on the counter and throws her coat on top of them, then strips down to a T-shirt and underwear. Nancy doesn't pretend to look elsewhere; this makes the serene look on Robin's face turn darker, and Nancy doesn't know what this means but it thrills her. 

They go to bed together. It feels like the last time Nancy had a lover, in her last year of college—a boy from her internship, who dressed nicely but touched her like he was just trying to get an assignment done. The natural high of sinking into bed with someone, the way that time seems to stop. But unlike the boy from her internship, Robin does not kiss her, or pin her awkwardly under her bodyweight (a feeling that was something like being buried alive, Nancy thought at the time). Instead, she takes Nancy very gently in her arms. The way she lays her hands down suggests she's acting with the utmost care: one hand gingerly on the small of Nancy's back, another threaded softly in her hair, and then they sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in my feelings about fictional wlw as usual


	5. simmer

Nancy wakes from a dreamless sleep as dawn breaks over the city, head throbbing, but otherwise feeling strong and rested. It takes her a disorienting moment to remember exactly why her face is pressed into the velvety skin of someone's neck. The previous night starts to come back to her in a jarring, disjointed sequence—the bar, the countdown, that rush of anxiety, the cool bricks of the alley under her palms, a fireworks-shaped gash across the sky, the taxi, the bed, and Robin's arms around her. Of course, Robin. She doesn't have to open her eyes to confirm; when she breathes in, the lingering smell of herbal smoke and Robin's perfume tells her who she's sprawled on top of. 

She wonders when she started knowing so certainly what Robin smelled like. She wonders about a lot of things, frankly, but until the pounding behind her ears stops, she'll have to put those wonders aside. For what feels like a long time, she listens to their breathing, feels the rhythmic motion of Robin's ribcage against her own. Just once, on an impulse that comes from some deep, primal part of her, she parts her lips against the soft skin of Robin's throat and tastes salt.

Runny sunlight is coming through the blinds when Nancy finally decides she has to move, reaching back for the glass of water on the bedside table. Despite her best efforts not to wake Robin in the process, the arms around her tighten and then release, followed by a deep sigh and a pair of groggy blue eyes now locked on hers. 

It feels like a dam has broken and any charade of friendly distance between them is gone now. Unflinching, Robin reaches up with one hand and pushes Nancy's hair out of her face; strokes her cheek; rubs her thumb ever-so-gently over Nancy's lip. "How are you feeling?"

"Better now," Nancy says, fighting the urge to close her eyes and lean into Robin's palm. "Thank you for staying with me. Really. I needed it." 

"My pleasure." 

Something has definitely changed between them, something so foreign Nancy can't recognize it, but still too heavy to ignore. All they did was sleep last night—why does it feel like so much more? 

"Is this what you do with all the girls you bring home?" Nancy asks, trying to sound jovial, but the amused quirk of Robin's brow suggests that her genuine curiosity has shown through. 

"Nope." Robin smiles, subdued like she's sitting on an inside joke. "Usually I kick them out afterward." 

"After what?" Nancy smiles now too, feeling that same thrill from last night start to creep through her. This time, it makes her bold.

The smile starts to fall away. Robin's eyes search hers for some hint of a boundary, a warning, but find none. "Do you really want to know?" 

"Show me." 

There's that shadow in Robin's eyes again: the one from last night, when Nancy told her to stay. Robin pulls her closer and kisses her, maddeningly slowly, giving Nancy ample opportunity to pull away. She doesn't; even if she wanted to, she's not sure if she could. A wry thought in the back of her mind laments how many men she had to kiss before arriving at this. The word _divine_ comes to her, forcefully. Everything is divine—the pillow-soft lips, the smoothest skin she's ever touched, the little sounds coming up from the back of Robin's throat.

She imagines they could have spent the whole day in bed, folding into each other, but they're interrupted by a knock at the door. Two knocks, actually—short, curt. Robin, now pinning Nancy's wrists over her head with one hand, pulls away and looks back in that direction. 

"It must be Steve and Jonathan," she says, climbing off of the bed (and the girl under her, which makes Nancy scowl). "I guess we should have called to tell them we're alright, huh?" 

"I guess." Nancy props herself up on one elbow, impatient for Robin to deal with whoever was at the door so she'd come back. But when Robin opens it, no one's there, and she stands glued to the spot for an eerily uncomfortable amount of time. 

"Robin?" 

"I think you need to see this." 

Just like that, the blissful calm is gone, replaced by all of that nameless fear from before. Holding her shirt closed with one hand, Nancy meets Robin at the door and immediately understands why Robin is suddenly tense with worry. The hallway is empty, but a single envelope rests on the doorstep, addressed to Nancy Wheeler.

"Shut the door," Nancy says, hoarsely, after stooping down to pick up the envelope like it's a live bomb.

Robin does as she says, locking the deadbolt, too. "Is that from...?"

"I don't know." Her hands feel impossibly heavy with the envelope in them, which doesn't make any sense at all, but they do nonetheless. She takes it gingerly to the table and slices the fold open, touching it as little as possible as she shakes a letter free. 

Nancy,

Is it alright if I call you Nancy? I feel like I know you well enough now. Sorry to write you at home; I suppose I don't want all of our correspondence to be aired out in the press. 

I enjoyed your last article. You're really, very clever to have noticed the pattern. I think you're right about the police, too. What a travesty that they can't be bothered to find me. Not like you, anyway. I think it'll all be up to you to end this, Nancy. I like that story. Small-town girl solves big-city crimes. I'm from a small town, too. I like that about us. 

Here's a tip, just for you. No one will know if you never tell the cops: Queens Public Library, tomorrow. 

By the way, you looked like you were having fun last night. 

Happy new year,

Your friend.

The heavy, leaden feeling in her hands spreads through her whole body as she reads, until she's pinned to the spot, a statue of horror. Robin shakes her a few times—she thinks she calls her name, too, but her ears can barely register the sound—before spinning away to the bedside table and grabbing the phone. She dials it, a little frantic. Slowly, once the feeling has come back to her, Nancy sits down at the table and watches until Robin puts the receiver down. 

"Steve and Jonathan are on the way," she says. There's real fear in her voice; Nancy hasn't heard that before from Robin and it chills her. "It's going to be okay." 

"What about this situation is okay?" Where Robin's voice has real fear, Nancy thinks hers has real despair. The hollow quality of it shocks her. "Five minutes ago there was a serial killer outside my door. He knows where I live, Robin. This is not okay."

| | |

Steve and Jonathan arrive at the same time (which makes Robin pin Steve with a curious look that he deliberately ignores). The three of them talk in loud, nervous voices for some time. Nancy watches them, now holding her revolver to her chest like a safety blanket.

"She obviously can't stay here anymore," Robin says, glancing back at the door to doublecheck that it's bolted. 

"Definitely not." Jonathan picks up the camera hanging around his neck and snaps a picture of the letter, laid flat on the table. 

"She can come stay at our place," Steve offers. His hair is uncharacteristically flat today, like he just rolled out of bed. "I'll take the couch." 

Jonathan looks over at Nancy, unnerved by how quiet she is. "I really, really think we should call the police. They need to see this. Maybe there's CCTV or security cameras to check." 

"There are no cameras." Nancy finally speaks, eyes on the gun. "This building's old as hell. And I don't want to call the police." 

"Why the hell not?" Steve asks.

"I can't explain it, I just—I know we can't call them," she insists. "He wants me to find him. He's giving me clues. I think if I betray his trust—if he thinks I'm giving this to the cops—then he won't be as forthcoming next time." 

"What'll it matter if you're dead?" The exasperation in Steve's voice is palpable. He sinks onto the bed, taking a pause when he notices Robin's coat on the floor next to him. Now she's the one who looks away.

"He doesn't want to kill her," Jonathan says. "Nancy doesn't fit the type of his victims. This is all a game to him, and I think she needs to play. It's the only way we'll draw him out." 

"You're all insane," Steve says. "Robin? Voice of reason, please?" 

"I think they might be right." Robin's bitten her lip so many times it's starting to tear. "But I don't think Nancy should stay here, just in case."

Jonathan twitches the curtain back from the window, looking out as if he'll be down on the street, staring back. "You're right. Listen, I'll stay here, just in case he sends any more letters. Nancy can go with you guys." 

"You can't stay here alone," Nancy protests. "He wants to mess with me, fine. I'm not going to let my friends get hurt too." 

"Then I'll stay too," Steve says. Nancy and Robin stare at him like he's speaking another language. "What? You're right, it's not safe to be alone here. It'll be fine, I'll get an air mattress or something." 

"You really don't have to do that," Nancy says. "I mean it. You guys don't deserve to have your lives upended for me."

"It wouldn't be the first time." Jonathan's tone makes all of them quiet. "The four of us have fought actual, literal monsters and Russian war criminals. You think we can't handle this? Come on, Nancy. Let us help."

| | |

It's decided. Nancy packs an away bag and leaves the boys in her apartment with a key and a wish for good luck. Paranoid, she and Robin use the building's backdoor to leave, because she becomes convinced that he might be outside watching the front door. The fear doesn't subside until they're underground, waiting on the F train. She keeps one hand on the gun in her pocket and the other hand just barely touching the hem of Robin's coat. Maybe she needs her friends after all.

When they get to Steve and Robin's, Nancy places a hasty phone call to her office and tells the secretary that she'll be out sick (and endures the snarky comment about calling out sick on New Year's Day). Numbly, she wonders if she'll ever go back to the newsroom. He knows where she works. For all she knows, he might stake the place out every day, watching her on her way in and out. She'd never really know.

"Nancy." Robin's voice is warm and raspy in her ear. She realizes that she still has the phone up to her ear, even though the call ended some time ago and there's nothing but a dial tone on the other end. Robin gently takes it from her and sets it back in its place. "Come over here."

They sit on the lumpy couch and have coffee. Robin puts on a Billy Wilder movie that neither of them really watches, but the noise is nice. If Nancy closes her eyes she can almost pretend that things are good—that she's just spending time with someone she cares about, doing nothing in particular but being together with a hot drink on a cold day. But when she opens her eyes, she sees the letter on the coffee table in front of them, and she can't pretend anymore. 

"Do you want to talk about this morning?" Robin asks, cautious. 

"Do we have to?" 

Robin blinks in surprise, her hands going a little slack around her mug. "Uh, no. We don't have to." 

"Then let's not," Nancy says resolutely. "With everything that's going on right now, I just—I want one thing to be easy, you know?"

She offers a weak smile, which Robin doesn't return. She has a guarded look in her eyes. "I don't know if it's going to be easy. I just need it to be real." 

"What do you mean?"

"Look, I've been a first-time for girls before. Girls that I've liked a lot," she adds, a shadow of an old hurt coming over her face. "But I was just a phase to them. So if this is something temporary, I'd like to know." 

Nancy just stares at her, taken aback, before managing to form a coherent response. "Robin, I'm sorry, I—I didn't mean for it to come out like that. I'm not using you. I promise. It's real." 

She doesn't know how to express that anymore sincerely than she has, but the pained expression on Robin's face makes her chest constrict uncomfortably—not with the kind of fear that comes from a serial killer knocking on your door, but the fear that you've hurt someone you care about. She reaches one hand out and holds Robin's cheek as gently as she can, hoping to wordlessly convey something she can't quite articulate. On the television, Marlene Dietrich asks from beneath her lowered lashes, _"Want to buy an illusion?"_

| | |

Neither of them entertains the thought that Nancy should sleep in Steve's room, which he graciously offered to her before they left. Even without the new developments in their relationship, Nancy couldn't imagine being alone right then, especially if she planned on sleeping at all. Just waiting ten minutes for Robin to get out of the shower that night makes her antsy. Every time she hears a voice or a footstep out in the hallway, her fingers reach for the handle of the gun on the nightstand.

"Do you want to leave the lights on?" Robin asks, joining Nancy on the bed. She smells like coconut from her shampoo, a clean, heady scent that makes Nancy's eyelids droop. 

"Can we?" 

"Sure." She turns off the overhead lights but leaves the bedside lamp on. When she gets back in bed, she throws her arm over Nancy with a familiarity and ease that surprises them both.

"Goodnight," Nancy says. Absentmindedly, she holds Robin's hand where it rests against her ribs. 

"Goodnight." 

Robin falls asleep within minutes, a skill that Nancy's never quite gotten the hang of. She stares at the ceiling fan for some time, wide awake, and imagines what she'll find at the library tomorrow in Queens. Will he be there? Or just his victim? She isn't sure which is worse. The clock on the dresser marches to an ungodly hour. Her eyes burn from the simple trial of being awake. It isn't until Nancy checks that the safety on the gun is on, then holds it to her chest, over her heart, that she finally falls into a restless sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was kind of a buildup chapter but robin said lesbian rights anyway
> 
> also never know what to title these chapters so i'm currently stealing titles from hayley williams' new album. stream petals for armor girlz
> 
> also also i'm becoming a tumblr bitch again so hmu on that hellsite @ goodbiforever :3


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